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Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Isn’t it interesting that whenever a politician or military analyst/pundit suggests Canada needs an aircraft carrier, leftists in Ottawa jump all over the suggestion, ridiculing it and telling us how old-fashioned the idea is. Yet today we get news from Reuters that China—the ultimate leftist nation—is building two aircraft carriers as part of a military modernization program—this in addition to another carrier, a former Soviet vessel, which it bought from Ukraine in 1998.

The arguments against Canada having such a vessel (regardless of what we call it) are almost always made by civilians with little or no real knowledge of our armed forces or naval requirements—for example, Liberal and NDP politicians. The United States, don’t you know, has a responsibility to protect us—I only hope someone has told them that.

What would someone like Maj.-Gen. Lewis MacKenzie know about such things? In a speech back in 2003, the retired Canadian general told a conference on world conflict and the military, “we need two small aircraft carriers. … Think Ark Royal, like in the U.K., carrying vertical, short take-off aircraft.” Or how about Stephen Saunders, editor of Janes Fighting Ships, who has said that several small nations are thinking of buying carriers.

Eleven of the world’s navies operate, or are about to operate, various classes of aircraft carriers—Brazil, China, France, India, Italy, Russia, South Korea, Spain, Thailand, U.K and U.S. And according to reports, Australia has plans to purchase a carrier.

4 comments
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I would no longer call China a "leftist" nation, Russ. The current economic and political system of China seems to resemble a capitalism where the people whom own the economy also have an institutionalized grip on power.

China may be led by something called the "Communist" Party of China, but they abandoned economic Marxism two decades ago. Sure, the state schools still preach Marxism, worker's revolution, the inevitable violent overthrow of them capitalists, yada yada, but the Communist party does not practice what it preaches. It merely uses Red ideology to provide "moral" cover for their godless dictatorship.

Now it is only the Tyrannical Party of China.

Just because something has a label on it doesn't mean that the label advertises truthfully what it actually is. Heck, North Korea's official state name is the DEMOCRATIC People's Republic of Korea. Quite the misonomer.

If the new Chinese aircraft carriers operate as safely as their new high speed trains we have nothing to worry about, but Canada should look at possibly two Ice Class carriers for Arctic operations, one based in Esquimalt and the other in Halifax.

These would greatly extend Canada's Search and Rescue capabilities as well.

Aircraft carriers are quite vulnerable to attack from a variety of very effective missile systems. Before 9/11 when cruise missiles where becoming operational there was quite a bit of rhetoric about the expense of billion dollar aircraft carriers versus the near sure strike of a million dollar terrain hugging cruise missile and the resources required in a flotilla of destroyers to escort the aircraft carrier.

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